On Wednesday, if all goes as planned, Mars will have two more robots from Earth prying away at its secrets, including a European-built flying saucer that will attempt to land on the ground.

The saucer, known as Schiaparelli, is aiming to touch down in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars, located 2 degrees south of the equator, at around 10:48 a.m. ET (14:48 GMT). The European Space Agency, which is overseeing the mission, has tried this once before, with disappointing results. Flight controllers lost contact with its spacecraft, known as Beagle-2, after touchdown on Dec. 25, 2003.

More than 11 years later, images from one of the five orbiters circling Mars showed that Beagle did indeed survive the landing, but some of it solar panels didn't open, blocking the communications antenna line of sight to Earth.

Schiaparelli won't have that problem. The lander, which is about 8 feet wide and 5.4 feet tall, doesn't have solar panels. It will rely only its internal battery, which limits its operational time on Mars to just a few days.

That's long enough for engineers to collect information about the tricky ride through Mars' thin air and what they hope will be a gentle landing on the planet's dusty face. Schiaparelli is intended as a test run for an ambitious, follow-on rover that will search for past or present life on Mars.

Which is not to say that Schiaparelli won't be put to work for science. The lander has a weather station to that will collect wind speed, humidity, pressure, temperature and other data at the landing site. It also is outfitted with a compact array of retro-reflectors to serve as location targets for laser-equipped Mars orbiters.

Schiaparelli rode to Mars with Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter, a science and communications satellite that will put itself into orbit a few minutes before the lander descends to the surface.

The pair will join a seven-fleet armada currently on or around Mars, the most spacecraft to ever be working simultaneously on a planet beyond Earth.